This actually not that far fetched, there are some countries around the world where prostitution and sex services are legit businesses, even in first world countries.
I'm not sure first world is a relevant variable, other than giving us more confidence that "things there probably don't suck too much."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_law
Legal in Germany, New Zealand, a good chunk of South America, Switzerland, Austria, Greece, half of Australia,Turkey... In some of these countries there are sex worker unions. Some Swiss city was contemplating setting up something like a drive-in brothel.
Lots of quasi-legal countries too, the core act is legal but brothels and open advertising aren't. Brazil, Spain, probably France before they jumped on the Swedish model, Canada ditto, India, a good chunk of Africa, UK, the other half of Australia...
Then lots of ostensibly illegal countries: US, the other half of Africa, Arabia, China, Russia...
...also, supposedly Thailand and Japan. But since Thailand is infamous for sex tourism, and in Japan quite a lot of sex work is legal and even regulated by cities, this map is obviously simplistic, or focused on penis-vagina sex.
What's unique to the First World is a new trend of "we won't arrest sex workers, but we'll arrest their clients." A paternalistic abolitionism, "we won't persecute those poor misguided or exploited sex workers, but obviously no one could freely consent to have sex for money." The actual result of these laws is to make life harder for sex workers, leaving them with more violent clients (the sort of people least likely to be scared off by the risks.)
last edited at Jul 11, 2020 8:23PM